Orange Ginger Soda

I figured I would try my hand at soda. I went all out and decided to make it from scratch.

Ginger 1.4 pounds
Oranges about 23 organic navel ( 1 bag)
Splenda 7 pounds equivalent to sugar
hint of Allspice

I'm not sure why I decided to do this tonight. Pictures will be forth coming.

Here are some shots of my soda brew. I started doing this at about 9:00pm at night, and finished up at about 1:00am, minus some cleanup.
First the chop everything. I was going to use a blender or food processor for the ginger, but that is rather loud so late at night.





I figured I want it low calorie.


That is pretty much it for food prep. I didn't sanitize any of this stuff, since it would all be boiled.

Now on to the brew. I used my amazing brewmation soda system. 1 hour boil with both the ginger and oranges thrown in.

I also made this hop spider today. I realized I didn't have enough nuts, so its only 3 arms right now. And I did accidentally drop it into the boil. Anyone know how bad that will be? PVC schedule 40.

The controller.




back of the kettle




close up of the ginger




Orangetasic




I think i need to look into better ventilation


yup. its that ghetto right now.

After 1 hour


Welcome to your new home



I didn't use my plate chiller, and sent this into the keg boiling hot to mix wit the spledia. I hooked up the CO2, but it started leaking oops. I am waiting for it to cool. 8 hours later it was still a hot keg.

Looks good! Keep us posted on the final product please.

If you look at the photos, you can see that I had a lot of oranges in my .. what do you call it? soda-wort?

Anyways, I took a sample finally, and I can say 3 things about it.
#1 this does not taste anything like ginger ale off the store shelves.
#2 this does not taste anything like orange soda off the shelves.
#3 its pretty damn good, and kind of has a kick to it.

Now for the bad part.
I have rather a lot of orange pulp in it. I'm out of kegs to transfer to. I can free up 1 keg if I bottle. I was also thinking of just bottling my soda into used 2 liter bottles, and reuse screw on caps. If I use a picnic faucet and user a funnel with a strainer in it.
How much carbonation will I loose? would I be better off freeing up the keg. filer it with a strainer, and re-carbonate?

That looks fantastic!
If you bottle it cold and carefully, you won't lose much carbonation. How many volumes are you carbonating?
You can also use the BMBF to bottle into glass, you don't lose much carbonation that way.

Carbed up to 30psi. I'm going to try it with a 1 L bottle today and see how it goes.

Pouring it didn't work out to well, and made it flat. I just had a glass of it unfiltered. I don't mind a tiny bit of orange pulp.
I'm not sure this is ginger ale anymore. It was spicy! It has the color of mountain dew. I really should have taken a picture, but I gulped it down.
I ordered more kegs, that showed up the other day, so I will do a transfer though a strainer.
Anyone know if I can send carbonated liquid though a plate filter? I know I'll loose the carbonation, but will it hold together?

Sounds great, How much water i would need? I'm thinking of orange soda with mint. If i have to juice the oranges first like in other recipes, it's a time consuming. I might try your way chopped it and boil it. How much pressure do you use and how long till it'd be ready?

I ended up making 5 gallons of soda.

Honestly I think in the future I might make the following changes.

Instead of chopping, using a food processor to slice up the oranges. Then take juice and left overs and put it in a grain bag.

Use a LOT less ginger. That fresh ginger I had was too overpowering. I could drink a glass of it, but really it was too spicy. Maybe put flames on the bottle.

Only make 1 or 2 liters as a test. Get one of the soda bottle carb caps. They are under $20.

Switch to another sweetener besides splenda. It was a bit costly, and their are better things to use.

In the end I ended up dumping it just because I don't think I could have drank that much!

I used 30 psi and let it sit for 2 weeks.

sicabeer said:

I ended up making 5 gallons of soda.

Click to expand...

I did this my first time too!!!

Psst, you ruined your citric acid when you boiled your oranges, add some more in at the end. It'll be tasty, I promise!